Abstract: Scaled physical modeling investigated structures formed during thick-skinned contractional salt tectonics in a foreland fold-and-thrust belt.Dry quartz sand simulated brittle sedimentary rocks,and viscous silicon polymer simulated viscous rock salt.During the shortening,the salt layer strongly decoupled deformation in the suprasah overburden from that in the subsalt strata.Overburden structures mainly comprised box folds,fore-and back-thrusts,and pop-ups,whereas subsalt structures comprised fore-and back-thrusts and pop-ups.Faults did not propagate across the salt layer and were confined within either the overburden or the subsalt strata.Structures in the fold-and-thrust belt showed no consistent vergence.The profile of the Coulomb wedge of the deformation belt comprised a flat segment and a forward-sloping segment;the flat part corresponded to the area where the subsah pop-up had uplifted the overlying salt and overburden layers.No diapiric salt structures were formed during the shortening.Comparative modeling showed that thin.skined contractional salt tectonics created similar structures in the suprasah overburden to those in the thick-skined models.However,the overall profile of the Coulomb wedge in the thin-skined model had a lower taper.On the other hand.a model lacking a salt layer created an entirelydifferent structural style.In the model lacking the salt,fore-thrusts and tight folds dominated the fold-and-thrust belt,and the structures showed a very strong and consistent basinward vergence.Among all the models,the model lacking the salt had the highest Coulomb wedge taper.